Volume 4, Issue 47: Willie McGee

"A part of this organization for decades, he's still the same old Willie McGee."

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it.

Earlier this year, when my oldest son William turned 11, my friend Tim Grierson, with whom I host the Grierson & Leitch podcast, emailed me to wish him a happy birthday. My response blew his mind.

“You realize that William is now the age that we were when we met?”

This is true. I met Grierson at Project Extra, a special program for “gifted” students in Mattoon, Illinois. Twice a week, a bus would show up at each of the six grade schools in town and cart the “smart” kids to an afternoon program, where we would do exercises with the other “gifted” kids. I don’t recall the specifics of the program well; I vaguely remember lying down and staring at the ceiling while a teacher told us to “explore the limits of your imagination.” It was not like we were doing particularly difficult math or trying out complex science experiments; it was more about being creative and silly—open to the universe. I remember one exercise we did where we were encouraged to make up nonsense words and then try to convey a story to the rest of the students using only those made-up words, context clues and body language. In retrospect, it was pretty hippie for Central Illinois. I liked it.

Anyway, that’s where I met my friend Tim Grierson. All I knew he was a Cardinals fan and that he went to the Catholic school and that he was taller than I was. I wouldn’t become best friends with him, really, until high school. But I remember meeting him at Project Extra. I was in the sixth grade. I was 11 years old. I was the same age my son is now. I remember meeting him vividly. And I remember how that friendship progressed. It is a progression of events that is logical, straightforward and continuous. I can see how we got from then to now. There are not many gaps in those 36 years. I can follow how it all went down.

My first son was born when I had just turned 36 years old, and I was born when my father had just turned 26, so one of my favorite party games is to play with that 10-year difference to think about where I was when my father was the age I am now. (This was initially inspired by going to my 25th high school reunion and meeting two grandparents from my class.) When I am 47, my oldest son is in the fifth grade. But when my dad was 47, I was a junior in college. That is an unfathomable chasm. When I was a junior in college, I saw my father as … well, let’s face it, I saw him as an old man, or, at the very least, a man out of step with the current times, a man whose personal story and narrative had mostly been told, a man whose life appeared situated, locked in place and set forever. He had a son he had sent to college. He had a daughter who was about to graduate high school. He had been married for more than 25 years. He was established an adult as he possibly could be.

But of course it is never as simple as that. There is a fundamental aspect to our parents that is inherently unknowable. I’m as close to each of my parents as anyone in the world is close to them, but there are still ways that someone they worked with, or someone they were friends back in high school or in basic training, or just a random guy Dad used to drink with at Spanky’s, will forever know them better than I ever could. We are different people in different circumstances, with different people, at different points in our lives—and we act differently in every situation. And this is even more true as a parent. If my kids are in the room, even I don’t realize it, I subtly act differently than I do when they are not. I’m more “on,” more alert, more …. guarded. It will probably be like this no matter what stage of my life I’m in, which, inherently, makes certain parts of my personality unknowable to them, makes certain parts of all parents unknowable to all children. And I think the most profound shift I make when my kids are around is that I try to make it look—I feel obliged, almost duty-bound, to make it look like—as if I have a better idea of how the world works than I actually do. I suspect all parents are like this in some way. I do not know if it is the correct thing to do or not.

I think of my father’s life at 47, or my mother’s life at 47, or anyone’s life at anytime, and from the outside they look settled and established—like they’ve gotten through the hard parts, over the hump. But this is of course not how life works. Life just keeps throwing new things at you, and it will never stop doing so. My parents felt like stable, rock-solid, slab-of-granite foundations for me when I was a kid. But of course they weren’t. They only felt that way to me because they put up a good front and because I wasn’t observant—or not self-obsessed enough—to notice any cracks. I think if I’m doing my job right, my kids should feel the same way. Their lives have enough going on without ever having to sweat their dad.

But in the end, we remain that same person, start to finish. When my dad was 47, he could look back at when he was 11 and still have vivid, specific memories from that age and be able to trace them back to the person he was then, just as now, at 73, he can have memories back to when he was 47 and trace them back to today. He surely remembers the day that picture above was taken of us all, when he was 47, at a wedding the same way I can remember the day I met Grierson at the age of 11. Dad was 36 when I was 11. He was the same guy then too.

I do not know where my oldest son will be in 36 years, if he is making friends with someone today who he will still know then. But either way: In one fashion or another, he’ll remember being 11. He’ll be able to see how he got from here to there. It will feel like the same story to him.

Someday he’ll see this picture:

And he will do the math, and look up what year that book of his dad’s came out, and remember what it felt like, what his dad was like during that time, and realize he was 11 when that happened, and that he still can feel it in his bones, he can still feel all of it. (He’ll also be amazed his dad let him grow his hair that long.) Then he’ll be 17, and 27, and 37, and 47, and he won’t believe he’s the same age as his dad was the year his book came out, how I could possible be as old as my old man was. And on and on and on it will all go. I will (hopefully) be 73 someday, the age my dad is now, and I won’t be able to believe it. Though it will be the only real truth that matters.

It is the holidays, the time of year when we (eventually) slow down for a second and reflect on where we were last year at this time, and the year before, and the year before. What has changed? What is the same? What were my worries last year? What will be my worries next year? And it’ll never stop. I’ll have different questions next year than I had this year. But there will always be questions, and struggles, and hopes, and fears, and stretches where everything seems wrong and terrible and quiet sublime little moments where you feel like the luckiest person who has ever lived, just to be able to live, right now, the way you do, to have people in your life who care about you, to have people you get to know so well, for so many years now, and for so many more years to come. There’s always a different story. But it’s all part of the same long story. You’re always on the journey to somewhere. And by the time you get there, you may well be on the way to somewhere else. To have known people for decades is a gift. To know them for decades more is, well, that’s what life is. It can feel like you’re getting away with something. It can feel like you’re living the most exciting story in the world.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. America Is Coming to Save the Men’s World Cup. You’re Welcome, The Washington Post. This was a fun one. It’s actually in the print edition tomorrow, so if you have access to a physical copy, grab me one. If you send it to the post office box below, I will thank you very profusely.

2. What Have We Learned From This World Cup?, New York. Leading up to Sunday’s final ….

3. Guillermo Del Toro Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with Pinocchio.

4. So What’s a Reasonable Age to Expect to Live to? Medium. This has been on my mind a lot lately.

5. The Fundamental Question of 2023: Does Trump Fade or Not? Medium. Feels like we’ll know in the next six months.

6. Seven Unanswered Questions From the MLB Offseason, MLB.com. Current, as of last night!

7. Seven Takeaways From the Carlos Correa Signing, MLB.com. Another reason to get to that great stadium.

8. Will Any of These Playoff Drought End in 2023? MLB.com. My money’s on … the Orioles!

9. Your World Cup Rooting Guide, Medium. Back to the pieces that are outdated by Saturday.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, our annual rapid-fire end-of-year wrap-up show, with (deep breath) “Women Talking,” “The Whale,” “Emancipation,” “White Noise” and “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.” We also did a special show about “Avatar: The Way of Water” that went up yesterday. Next week: Dorkfest 2022!

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, no show this week.

Seeing Red, no show this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Steven Spielberg’s Movie Magic Has a Dark Side,” David Sims, The Atlantic. A very smart piece looking at how The Fabelmans—a movie I like but don’t love—ties into Spielberg’s guilty conscience as a filmmaker.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Sometimes Salvation,” The Black Crowes. I was at this on Wednesday, and it was super awesome.

Seeing Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes (and his son) reminded me just how much I listened to that freaking band when I was in high school and (early) college. I will forever have those first two albums committed to memory.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

The final two newsletters of the year, the next two, are as close as a clip show as this newsletter gets: Next week will be the top 10 movies of the year, and the one after that, on New Years Eve, is just the highlights from this newsletter from the previous year. To warn! Sometimes even I need a bit of a break. Happy holidays, everyone. Be safe out there.

Best,
Will